For a humorous magazine, Spy often was aggressive about straight feature reporting. In the summer of 1992, it ran the only serious investigative story on President George H.W. Bush's extramarital affairs with Jennifer Fitzgerald and other women.[3] The following year, Spy ran an article entitled "Clinton's First 100 Lies", detailing what it described as the new president's pattern of duplicitous behavior.[4]

In October 2006, Miramax Books published Spy: The Funny Years (ISBN 1-4013-5239-1), a greatest-hits anthology and history of the magazine created and compiled by Carter, Andersen, and one of their original editors, George Kalogerakis.